Manually duplicate existing media sets

[davei]

Hi

I have a Vmware estate that I backup weekly and monthly, b2d.  This comprises 13 jobs (simplisticly, one job represents one LUN), each 6-700GB.  In order to stagger the start-times, so as not to bomb out the storage, each job is run by a seperate policy.  So 13 policies.  This requirement (staggered starts) prevents me from using automated (policy-driven) duplicates-to-tape, at least in BE2010.

So this is no great hardship, each month after the monthly b2d jobs have finished I would manually create a duplicate job, filter by date, then select each backup set and build up the duplicate job that way.  Target it to a tape library, I end up with one duplicate job that backs up the b2d media sets from the 13 b2d jobs - in one job.  A few days later it's done, hands off.

So now i upgrade to BE2014 for various other reasons.  Now i want to create my monthly duplicate as above, but am struggling.  I've tried:

1. Multi-selecting the 13 jobs in the Job-History tab of the vCenter server, right-clicking and selecting 'Duplicate'.  Sounds great, and at first looks like a far easier way of doing it than BE2010, but then it ends up creating 13 seperate Duplicate jobs.  Not what i want, i don't believe.

2. Using powershell.  I can get my list of B2D media from the job logs with something like:

get-bejobhistory | where-object {($_.JobType -eq "Backup") -and ($_.Name -like "Monthly*VM*") -and ($_.StartTime -ge $startdate) -and ($_.EndTime -le $enddate)} | get-bejoblog | find "Media Label:"

This gives me ouput like:

Media Label: B2D013483
Media Label: B2D013484
Media Label: B2D013485
Media Label: B2D013486
etc.

I was hoping there was a bemcli cmd-let i could pipe these b2d file names to (after cleaning them up or building a temporary selection list etc), something nice and obvious like new-duplicatejob or equivalent, but i can't seem to find one in the show-behelp file. 

So - my goal is to duplicate the b2d media used in these monthly AVVI backups, to a set of tapes in the tape library.  Until now, that has involved creating a single Duplicate job, target to the library, with the b2d files as the selections.

How should i best go about doing this in BE2014?  GUI or powershell don't mind.

Thanks

Dave

[pkh]

You should go to the Storage tab and select all the backup sets that you want to duplicate

[davei]

Thanks for replying.  Forgive me, i'm new to 2014.

I think I understand.  But if I do, it would seem to be a step backwards, at least in this particular use case.  My problem is that for a monthly dupe-to-tape, I need to take a backup set from each of 10-15 different B2D devices (just for the Vmware jobs, the Exchange\Data jobs are more devices!).  So clicking into each device is impractical, and won't create the single duplicate job (selection list) that i think i need.

Shirley having a powershell cmd-let would be a winner here - build your list of backup sets programatically, then feed it to the cmdlet.  I think i'll file an 'idea'.

Is it significant that I can't get 2014 to create one single Duplicate job like 2010 did?  Do i need one single job to properly duplicate all the backup sets from multiple backup jobs, multiple devices?  The target is a Scalar library full of LTO tapes.

[pkh]

You should be aware that BE 2014 only allows one disk storage per volume so you do not have many disk storage to deal with. Also, you would be duplicating backup sets which may comprise many actual disk files

[Colin_Weaver]

Can't you create a duplicate stage in the job definition that is ONLY linekd with the Monthly full - AND addtionally is scheduled for a few hours after you know it should have finished and then stagger the schedules for each duplicate and then stop doing manual duplicate jobs?

[davei]

My storage is a series of Quantum DXi appliances over CIFS, so i have numerous storage 'devices' in BE supporting multiple VMware backups and multiple NTFS, Exchange, SQL.  Each has a monthly, weekly, and where relevant a daily B2D device.  In total approximately 30 B2D devices, backed by CIFS shares on the DXis.

Don't ask about OST... my fingers were burnt a couple of years ago with BE 2010 and OST, massive data loss by Quantum, v poor reliability of BE 2010 OST devices\jobs, and v poor support from Symantec. OST support in BE may well have matured, on both Symantec and Quatum side, but it left a sour taste in our mouths so since then we keep it simple with B2D and scheduled appliance replication.  It works.

So BE2010 did these duplicates in one job - will BE2014 have to do it in mulitple jobs?  If so are there any major considerations or implications of this?

Thanks.

[davei]

Possibly yes - if you say so?

So i would end up with, say, 13 scheduled dupe-to-tape jobs.  I target them all to the same LTO library, and schedule them to stagger-start say 10 mins apart from eachother. The first job starts, remaining 12 sit queued until the previous job finishes, each one set to append rather than overwrite, and I end up with a set of tapes as I would have had I done it manually in 2010?

re: Tape library targetting - should i target the library, the partition, or the actual drive?  Or is that irrelevant?

[Colin_Weaver]

I would set the first duplicate job each month to start as overwrite unless you have a reason to append and make sure that the media set and the later duplicate jobs are set to allow further appends, making sure all jobs use the same media set.

If you have multiple tape drives in your library then it might be difficult to guarantee which tapes are used and you may need to test if partitoning the library or targetting just the specific drive will work best for you.